


continuous and differentiable

by Termagant (subduction)



Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-04
Updated: 2007-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:51:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subduction/pseuds/Termagant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The night before Hornblower is married, Bush takes him to a house in Charlotte Street.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	continuous and differentiable

The night before Hornblower is married, Bush takes him to a house in Charlotte Street.

Bush chooses the girl. Blonde, with a high healthy colour and green eyes and pert little breasts. He pays the madam with Hornblower's money, and lands an appreciative slap on the girl's round bottom as she goes past him to lead Hornblower upstairs.

They have both been drinking, of course, which still isn't much of an excuse. For that, or for the way Bush follows them up the stairs — the girl leading Hornblower by the hand, and Bush behind, with that heavy and slightly unsteady tread he has on land — or for what follows.

Hornblower is not so drunk that he couldn't do it himself, and properly he is Bush's superior again; but they have not yet sailed together as captain and lieutenant, and it is surprisingly easy to lie back and let Bush take charge.

He remains by the wall, just inside the closed door. If he stood upright the beams would brush his head. Hornblower imagines he is trying to be unobtrusive, and has to stifle a bit of a laugh at the thought. He does not laugh, however, when Bush begins to give commands.

"Undress him," Bush says, and the girl, who is straddling Hornblower's narrow hips, begins with his stock, unknotting it patiently with her deft little fingers. Then his shirt, up over his head. Throughout this exercise she looks at Bush. When he nods she moves down, does away with his trousers as well. Hornblower is naked now, and she looks to Bush for orders.

"Use your mouth," he says, then, and she does; and when Hornblower is spent and gasping he has the girl put her hands everywhere, calves to collarbones, pale hands on the pale, pale skin; and when Hornblower recovers Bush has her kiss him until he is breathless all over again. Later he will have her crawl back up Hornblower's supine form; will tell her in a hoarse voice how to use her own fingers to stretch herself for him, what rhythm to use as she rides Hornblower like a cutter in a gale.

Nothing untoward happens that night. Bush does not go to his knees before Hornblower, nor does he climb behind the girl, over Hornblower's legs, and put himself in her from behind so that they are fucking her together. It will be years before Bush would dare even to reach for his captain's hand. But long afterward Hornblower will think back to this night, to this dingy room in Charlotte Street and the light of Bush's sober blue stare, and to the way their eyes would meet across the girl's shoulder and then slide away again. He will think back, and he will imagine that this, _this_ was the night — that something fundamental happened here. Some essential shift, some change, some beginning: the inflexion point, perhaps, on the curve which is Hornblower and Bush, Bush and Hornblower.

He will, in fact, be wrong.


End file.
